From 1994? And Russian, too? Might as well be the middle ages! <g> Like Isaid, I think I'll wait for the simulations to improve. Personally, I would be no more surprised by 1000m waves than by 10m waves. And I wouldn't make fun of the work at Los Alamos that led to the smaller value (some of the best work in modeling impacts is coming out of Los Alamos) or of the newspapers reporting on the research.
Chris
***************************************** Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Meteorite-List" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Chris Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Ron Baalke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "edward moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Darren Garrison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "harlan trammell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 6:36 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] LANL: Meteor Could Cause Big Tsunami
Hi, Chris, List,
The graphs in "Tsunami Generated by Small Asteroid Impacts" by Hills,
Nemchinov, Popov, and Teterev in the UofA Press collection "Hazards Due To
Comets and Asteroids" (1994) show that for a 800 meter soft stone object
impacting in Atlantic deep water at 20 km/sec (average velocity for an
impactor), the height of the ocean wave 1000 kilometers away from the point of
impact would be 100 meters. Upon reaching the shallows which surround Florida,
the run-up height would increase to approximately 1000 meters (one full order of
magnitude).
Yes, friends, that's one full kilometer of water. I think that would make it
all the way cross the peninsula, don't you? I believe that hill near Micanopy is
about 95 meters high, which leaves lots of room (905 meters) for water overhead!
An 800 meter iron meteorite in the same place, same velocity, would produce
a water wave of 340 meters, ramping up to a 3400 meter wave on shore. That's a
wave over two miles high! Hello, Atlanta! Hello, Memphis! Hello, Houston! Heck,
I'm only 447 feet above sea level here in Illinois! How high did you say Denver
was?
Let's say the models are off by a factor of two, or four or even ten; it's
still Goodbye, Florida!
Actually, Chris is right; there is on-going dispute about impact tsunami
models. The dispute originates in the fact that it is difficult to find
geological evidence for the very large scale tsunamis predicted for impacts that
must have geologically frequent, hence suspicions have arisen that the models
are exaggerated. On the other hand, what are the geological evidences of really
ancient tsunamis and how easy to find would they be?
I recall reading many years ago an account of using steam hoses to excavate
a layer at a site in Alaska in which flora and fauna were churned up together,
mammoths and tree trunks, all jumbled and squashed in a tangled mass, and the
author wondering what could have caused it, earthquake, landslide? All of a
sudden it sounds a lot like a tsunami to me. In fact, I recall a number of
fossil sites where remains are jumbled and compressed and the investigators
always attribute it to "flash floods" or "landslides." Hmmm.
Would a Florida tsunami only 330 feet high feel much better to a person than
a Florida tsunami 3300 feet high, if it was just you standing on the beach at
Jupiter, waiting for it to hit you? In practical terms, I think the results
would be pretty much identical...
Sterling K. Webb
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